Author: seandct

You ever felt you’ve run so fast that you lost control? Cycled precariously, and so your core swayed like a small boat on a big wave? Dropped a knife and jumped for the stars?

One day, did you realise how immense nature spread out beneath your feet? Witness something you made grow independently? Emptied by the disinterested eyes of an animal?

Both of these instances are out of our domain, they are reflexes, instinct, an entwined, single product of two hundred thousand years of hunting and breeding. I wish our ancestors could say ‘your welcome’ because I’d love to talk to them. The struggle is so hard against them now.

Lonesome thrill-seekers enter arenas of adrenaline and dopamine, the fuels of fear, hysteria, and ecstasy. Entropy manifest in human form. Random, energy burning with a finality postponed by fleeting escape. They who are lost to the winds fly for as long as the winds blow.

Grounded types embark onto groupthink stations, acting as one and becoming each other in the shape of acceptance. Acceptance of an indeterminate rebellion against our own personal demons. Exhilarating in its own way. We’ll watch the sun set together.

The rejection of our primordial selves resonates through the ages. How ‘civilisation’ has inflicted terminal inner worlds upon us has wrought obvious devastation, resulting in inevitable suicide.

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Surrender to your instincts and lose your body to the natural rhythm of the language you speak. Dance to your mother’s walking rhythm as she carried you in her womb. Step in time to your ancestor’s heartbeat.

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I’ve been listening to techno for a nearly a year now; its drive, resonance, pace, flight has been engrossing and a sheer pleasure to explore. There’s little unanimity within myself as to what track I should have placed in accompany with a bleak post as this. No irony is lost on me as I post Hodge & Peder‘s 2017 track ‘All My Love’. Enjoy.

The people of Kyoto are similar to British people I’ve been told. We’re polite, not friendly. We think a hollow offer is better than the impoliteness of allowing a conversation to end. ‘Well, you simply must stop by whenever you’re next in the area.’ ‘We should get together again and I’ll cook my famous lasagne!’ ‘I’ll get us a round next time.’

In what naive world does the recipient of this formality swallow its bitter untruths? In light of the recent barbarism affecting the island’s shores, of course they stick together, Sherlock and Holmes, Mary Shelly and Frankenstein’s Maker, and yet, our imperial history and frank coldness to other’s suffering is undeniable. Hospitality was always a make-way for gains, or avoiding losing face. A burden upon an unwilling host. What’s remarkable, and atrociously British, is we invite it on ourselves.

It’s as if we like to suffer our own personal torments. It’s ecclesiastical. We drive forward prolonging our terror with the face of a knowing, dry humour diverting from a ‘woe is me’ character to something deemed ‘good’ = although we hate it we can’t help but be ‘good’. Is this a noble spirit?

There’s a custom in Kyoto that brings this all to mind. A meal of rice with Ocha (green tea) poured over it is a specialty from the Kansai area, and particularly Kyoto city, there, it’s called ぶぶずけ (bubuzuke). If a visitor is offered this dish when he’s arrived at a friend’s house, without due notice, he knows he is certainly unwelcome. The offer of hospitality is a rebuff.

In the British reinventions of etiquette, we appear to pride ourselves on transparent self-flagellation. When the Japanese read the air, they barefaced shame the guilty into inaction.

It’s interesting how similar devices are utilised under different constraints.

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A video from Kendrick’s latest. It has bright spots and slow burners, and all the while he’s had a real hot streak since GKMC, this can’t not come off as a disappointment. Away from the single Humble, and its bizarre video, this tune comes in a top 3 spot off the record.

Ultimately, it’s perceived as a precondition of adulthood. Take control of life, learn your path and tread it consciously, be willing, be adaptable, do it your own way for God’s sake. You can heed The Golden Rule beyond your own personal pale, and yet inflicting a decision upon others you would not want to hear yourself is a paradox.

In my such case, I’m choosing to not see my family and friends at home; I want to pursue my own path which takes me away from anyone I knew.

It requires a certain type of person, I must admit. And I suppose I always knew I was that type. Many pilgrims enter arduous globe-trotting, sometimes for years at a time, albeit, all the while with eyes on the return trip, eyes on the fuel gauge.

Have I escaped what I needed to? Have I finally bared my soul? Have I learnt what I wanted? Usually, we take what we get, and move on. We go on, and go back to where we can rest our head in comfort surrounded by family, friends, those who’ve accepted us.

To many, it’s unfathomable to want something different. Indifference is more painful than even hate, at least then there’s an urge, a thing that can be unpicked like a knot. Yet, indifference is recognisable, but when the thing isn’t even that, then these beloved ones face an abyss they’re unable to face.

For example, questions arise when inflicting this particular kind of pain on those you may consider irreplaceable in your heart. If you can leave them, then you do not love them; springs to mind with little meditation.

This paranoia is entirely dispensable and worthy of no one. A single moment can transform velocity and time. No matter the absence or presence of a thing or person, it is self-righteous to believe your being will affect any great change in our disinterested existence.

That is to say, presence does not communicate meaning like wise intention. So much is lain upon near-sighted evocation, and even though many only know this way of living, these few others are content with delivering in the ways they know best.

In the best times, a prescient eye is able to lovingly present salves to their beloved’s everyday.

At the worst, they become unrecognizable and reviled.

It’s up to these other’s conduct.

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Strange to be writing something new on here, it’s by accident and embarrassment in most cases, but when something is on your mind, something is on your mind. This record was rediscovered by accident too, making the pairing apt. Released in 2005, the entire record, Outside, Closer, is considered a thing of beauty although that’s hard to commit to seeing as it’s a little haphazard stylistically.

The future is perhaps one of the most interesting things one can grasp upon, hence we become obsessed with legacy as we grow older, because it’s inevitable of our perpetual navel gazing; the future will last longer than us, and there’s nothing we can do other than try to affect it in some way. Hopefully in a noble way.

The notion of global cooperation is communistic in this capitalist drab we sloth about in. Gaia is suffering, as any organism does when under attack by a parasitic bacteria that remains to multiple until exhaustion. It’s natural then for the Earth to strike back and regain balance, via natural disasters, it will attempt to wash itself clean. The potential global birthrate decline can’t drop quick enough. Any real organisation to combat change will be an aberration of historic behaviour.

These death tolls we’ve seen today, yesterday and tomorrow won’t ever cease as they never have down through history. Everyday luck dances, and down comes its foot in mysterious and confounding ways we apes speculate and attach meaning to. In the end, calamity will never reach 0%. There’s little fruit to bear in Utopian thinking.

With all this in mind, our children’s children will face pitiful lives in a glance, nothing recognisable of the vivacity that is dying before us. I foresee police states, bigger death tolls from robotic wars guided from space (no hyperbole), spiraling isolation of the individual as we choose to coddle up to the groupthink hivemind on the internet than embrace real life patterns.

Screaming and kicking? Maybe one last time. After that it will be quiet acquiescence, subjugated by security of a two-tiered society; those with money and security, a part of a globe-trotting race, and those without anything, no jobs, no welfare, no nation.

The wealthiest? Who can trust those psychotics to do anything decent?

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Whenever you’re stewing, and really soaking in those abysmal flavours one can concoct, where its been so long that the floor is crisping and burning, and the acridity rises in little flakes of black, you might as well say fuck it and listen to something astonishingly pretty. A great cure. I had to define ‘upbeat’ today, and in doing so it imbued me, all with a little help of the memory of this fine song placed above this rancorous post. Novos Baianos are a 1970s Brazilian freak, psych, samba, tropicana, rock band who excrete a cocktail so potent it clears workmen from the forests. Their mellifluous single ‘Preta Pretinha’ has allure in abundance. Dance. Sin. Rejoice. It’s all we can do. And no ‘sin’ was not a typo…

Travelling invokes a minority awareness, different psychogeographies are washing together, with one stronger by numbers. Self-awareness heightens and etiquette tightens its grip. Away disadvantage. Things are understood through double-take, where once innate. And like a thorn in the paw, we feel the burden on the beast. The extra labour, albeit with a polite face. Naturalise or don’t, one shall never know the inherent thoughts of the indigenous. Psychogeography is from birth. The interesting thing with flighty immigration is when the psycho does not resemble the geography. Then, visiting the indigenous geography. Does one feel transplanted? Feel they’re lacking something which they should have?

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Hailing from an area where diversity is a given, finding myself in a residence of homogeneity has required some getting used to. I love the variety, and definitely miss it. Existing as a minority member of a society though, that needed more computation. As seen in the above paragraph, the situation’s created a question I am keen to refine to a conclusion of somesort. Or, further confusion.

The movement of people is a historical fact. And a topical fact today. In many ages, ethnicity has been tied to different geographies, and of course, this has and does change, however, when ancestors lay down their markers, present day peoples frequently feel they owe something to them. I suppose rightly so. What feels like home is a primordial instinct. Now, how we feel isn’t concrete, but our remembering self often clings tightly to it.

Travailing to a new geography antagonises our initial homeward bound instinct. Crystalline in memory, some can’t assimilate properly into their new surroundings, cherishing their image of their homeland. On the other hand, many put down their roots and thrive happily in their newfound soil, energised by the conveniences the land provides, the strength of the community around them.

In either circumstance, our ancestors haven’t left us, floating above our heads. Like a debt, I personally feel like I’m in the red to them. So, hypothetically, if a person or a family emigrate, what do they feel when they return to an ancestral homeland? Especially considering ethnicity. For example, if you look Japanese, but grew up as an American, knowing little to none of the language or culture say, and return to Japan, there’s a societal expectation upon that person to have been apart of their society, to know the body language, cultural cues, language, customs. It’s like the people there see your ancestors and not the person in front of them. Of course, it’s natural a society are going to act like that. They are that society. But to an individual, how must it feel, your outward identity not correlating to your inside identity?

I certainly wish I could grasp an understanding, because maybe it could open the door to further movement for everyone. Many feel indebted to ancestors, customs, but gaining an understanding of the fear of the move and return would be a step in the right direction.

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This post is dedicated to a unique 1960s into 70s female singer songwriter, Laura Nyro. This above song is from her second record from 1968, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. Perhaps a significant inspiration on nearly all female songwriters that followed in her wake, her music still surprises me on repeat listens. That voice is seraphic, golden, quenching, something. It has something.

This was written amid my first overnight typhoon. The thunder sound itself is electrifying, the laser show its lightening affects upon the eyelids was worth the plane admission alone. Once the drama of an earthquake gets involved we have a real natural opera on the go.

The above record is a buried classic of the 1970s scene in Italy. Like, really buried. A showstopper of magisterial proportions, the symphonic rock genre looks different this side of it. There is an English sung version of Contaminazionewhich is predictably the wrong choice.

In this Tower of Babel age, people are forgetting this wonder: for centuries we’ve learnt from each other. Passing on stories, ruminating on useless knowledge, summoning lost names from the past’s abyss. Getting our kicks from the web has silenced us. Any conversation is now punctuated by Google searches and photos. The threat of truth has made us anxious; finer details are to be navigated through to deeper waters, studiously bent over rock pools feels like poverty next to the ocean. The ancient story teller Snorri Sturluson theorised that the old Scandinavian gods, like Odin, or Thor, were older kings whose stories were passed orally down into mystification, then deified, creating a rich cultural identity. For thousands of years we’ve embellished, passionately; resolute are some people in their beliefs of myths and religions. The impulsive lie that heightens an argument into the greater echelons of admiration has been scared away. In this way, Science, indeed, accessible Technology, has undermined our nature. Wrongness has been wrongly euthanized.

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A friend from Bristol told me about the boys in Monotonix, how they met during one of their live concerts. The drummer was crowdsurfing with his kit and the guitarist was just making his way to the back when he sweatily twisted around, stuck his tongue out and licked all of her front teeth. Apparently, from then on, a fantastical crush blossomed. Cute. I miss her, and I miss Monotonix, as they disbanded shortly after an infamous 1000 shows in five years and the release of their 2011 record Not Yet. But I fell in love with the first EP from 2008, Body Language, thus I present the title track and my best wishes to the most outrageous Tel Aviv garage rock maestros.